


Hide it, my heart

by clarinetta



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abuse, Brainwashing, Gen, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-23
Updated: 2014-05-23
Packaged: 2018-01-26 05:05:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1675748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarinetta/pseuds/clarinetta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This will hurt," the man says, and pushes him back into the chair. "Please remain still." Two prongs of sparking metal descend on either side of Bucky’s head and lock it into place.</p><p>"Begin," a sharp voice behind him commands, and Bucky starts to scream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hide it, my heart

**Author's Note:**

> Or, the one in which I take the plot of my favourite film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and combine it with my Winter Soldier feelings. I always felt like erasing Bucky's memories wasn't so easy the first time they did it as it was in the film, and then I rewatched Eternal Sunshine one night and boom, this happened.

A cold, cold room, half upright in a repurposed dentist’s chair. White behind eyelids he can barely open. Muted pain at the base of his left shoulder where there should be an arm. He knows there isn’t. His toes have gone numb with the chill in the room. He considers briefly begging for a blanket, a sheet. Something. Stops considering it when he remembers the vicious backhand he got the last time he tried to speak.

Steve. Where is—

"Is Subject 41 ready for the procedure?"

"Subject 41, ready."

"Remember, please, only take the emotionally significant ones first, and then we’ll retrace and reprogram the identity. We don’t want to take too much at once and risk serious damage to the basic function, like with the last subject."

He forces his eyes open. _Barnes_ , he wants to say, but the words get stuck somewhere in his chest. _My mother named me James Buchanan Barnes._

A man wearing a white lab coat moves into his line of vision. He is tall and wears glasses perched on the end of his nose, and there is no kindness behind the wire frames. He presses a button and thick metal handcuffs lock themselves over Bucky’s wrists and ankles, securing him to the chair. On instinct, Bucky strains forward, wrenching his arms any way he can, but the tall man in the lab coat puts a hand on his chest. Calm, so sure of himself that Bucky stops fighting. He looks up into the man’s eyes, pleading, wondering what more they could possibly do to him.

"This will hurt," the man says, and pushes him back into the chair. "Please remain still." Two prongs of sparking metal descend on either side of Bucky’s head and lock it into place.

"Begin," a sharp voice behind him commands, and Bucky starts to scream.

—

_It appears Subject 41 has fainted from the pain. Halt procedure?_

_No. Continue._

—

He is stumbling, falling through walls that aren’t there and turning corners that disappear when he whirls around. He can’t see more than three feet in front of him but he can sense someone there, just ahead; they want him to follow. He shakes his head to clear—something—a fog, a memory of pain, maybe, and keeps moving. He wonders, vaguely, where he is. He can head voices coming from somewhere above him—muted, indistinct, but there’s something clinical about the cadence of the words, something stilted and scripted. A ruffle of papers, a spark of electricity by his ear, and he flinches.

 _Where the hell am I?_ he wonders again. _And how did I get here?_

He stumbles again, this time scraping his palms against the ground to break his fall, and when he stands up and brushes himself off, he has both arms, and a rifle held firm between two strong, steady flesh and bone hands. It is bitterly cold on the mountain’s edge, snow blowing everywhere, sticking in his hair and on his eyelashes. He looks to his right and there is Steve, tall and impossible, pointing out the angles of the next crazy stunt they’re about to pull, and it dawns on Bucky: he’s in his own memories.

_This is the last time I saw you._

Everything happens the same. They land safely on the train, Bucky gets stuck behind the ammunition cases with no bullets, and Steve wades in and pulls him out.

"I had him on the ropes!"

"I know you did."

Steve blocks the blast with his shield and the force of it knocks him to the side. Bucky picks up the shield, shooting at the enemy, but when he turns to look, to make sure Steve is all right, he’s gone. Like he was never there in the first place.

The blast hits the shield again, and this time there is no one to reach for him when the railing breaks and drops him into the howling abyss.

—

Bucky wakes up just before dawn, deep in the forests of Germany, limbs tangled with Steve’s in a sleeping bag. He feels warm for the first time since he left Steve standing at the Expo in Brooklyn. He tilts his head up toward the ceiling of their shared tent and exhales slowly; his breath swirls out in a light twisting fog. Lets his head drop down again, forehead to forehead with Steve, as they have done so many times before.

"Steve."

"Mmm." Steve doesn’t sound awake, but Bucky knows the soldier in him snapped fully to attention at the sound of Bucky’s voice. “What, Buck.”

"I think they’re erasing my memories."

Blue, blue eyes snap open, the brightest thing in that dark black moment before the dawn finally cracks over the horizon.

"What?"

"The people who took me," Bucky explains, yawning; he is too warm to feel panicked about it yet. "They gave me a metal arm and now they’re taking my memories."

"Bucky, are you even awake or are you just sleep-talking?"

"No, that’s what I’m saying," Bucky answers patiently. "Look, see?" He points up at where the tent used to be; it has vanished completely. "I’m asleep, or knocked out, and they’re—"

He looks down at where Steve used to be, but Steve is gone. Bucky feels the chill of his absence creeping into his bones. He lies down and presses the heels of his palms to his eyes.

—

He opens his eyes and he is walking, has been walking for what seems like years and years. Feels like he will never stop walking; his feet will decay and the bone will erode down to dust and he will still be walking through these endless goddamn woods. ”We should reach the camp by evening tomorrow,” Steve’s voice calls back to the group behind them. The murmur moves through the crowd in low waves, and Steve turns and smiles at Bucky; it fades when Bucky doesn’t smile back.

"Are you…"

"Fine," Bucky answers shortly, just like he remembers. "Steve, listen—"

A flock of crows alights from the treetops above them, and Bucky is distracted momentarily, watching them take to the clouds; when he looks back, he is walking alone.

He closes his eyes, and when he opens them, he is back at the HYDRA facility, strapped to a table, a doctor holding the first of many needles up to the light and flicking it—

He closes his eyes and when he opens them they are being captured, men he knows (knew) lying dead and dying in the muck and blood—

He opens his eyes and he is making his first kill and feeling strangely empty—

He opens his eyes and an officer is screaming at him to fall in, what the fuck are you doing back there, Barnes you piece of shit keep up—

He opens his eyes and—

He opens his eyes—

He opens—

—

_STOP!_

—

He opens one eye first, slowly, then the other; flashing lights flicker behind him, and it takes him a moment to recognize the Expo. He hears voices, faintly: ”Don’t do anything stupid until I get back,” and “How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you,” and follows the sound around a corner, and there is Steve, watching his friend walk away.

"Steve!"

Steve whirls around.

"Bucky? But—"

"Come on, we gotta go." Bucky grabs Steve by the hand and yanks, and then they are running through crowds of people with disappearing limbs and blank faces. Steve stumbles behind, tripping over his own feet as Bucky searches frantically for an exit; all of the signs giving directions, once so colorful and bright, have been bleached white, like they’ve been sitting in the sun for ages. They come to a fork in the sidewalk, and Bucky takes a deep breath, turns toward the path on the right, and runs full speed ahead, still holding onto Steve, warm and solid and wheezing behind him. The Expo dissolves and other memories start to flash by: Steve knocked into the dirt and grime of a back alley corner just before Bucky reaches the bully, Bucky scratching nervously at his scalp while filling out his enlistment form, Bucky dragging Steve through the rain to some bar or another, Bucky on a date with a firecracker blonde who wrinkles her nose when she laughs. They run until Bucky cuts a corner too close and rams his shoulder into something solid—he squeezes his eyes shut against the pain and when he opens them again he can hear screams rolling through the air above his head, smells cotton candy and the sharp silver scent of rust and iron baking in the summer sun—

"Coney Island?" Steve gasps, completely out of breath from running. "What are we doing h—"

"Listen," Bucky says, whirling around and grabbing Steve’s tiny shoulders. "Some people, some really bad people, are stealing my memories. They strapped me to a chair and gave me a metal arm and now they’re taking everything."

Steve’s brow furrows, glancing down at Bucky’s two flesh hands, but he just says, “Okay. What do we do?”

"I don’t know," Bucky says, and it all crashes in on him at that moment, the horror of it nearly crushing him, making it almost impossible to breathe. His fingers tighten around Steve’s shoulders, enough to make them both wince. "I don’t know, I don’t know what to do, I don’t—"

"Hey," Steve cuts in. "Can you—Do you know why?"

"No, they wouldn’t let me—" Bucky shakes his head. "No. The only thing I heard was right before they started."

"What did they say, Buck?" Steve prompts him. "Come on, anything could help."

"They said—" he looks up at the cloudless sky, trying to calm down, trying to remember. "They said take the emotionally significant ones first. Then retrace and take my identity. Because they didn’t want to damage… something. The basics, I think."

"So… Coney Island is emotionally significant?" Steve asks, one eyebrow raised in mild amusement.

"Well yeah, punk, you were there," Bucky answers before he can stop himself. Steve opens his mouth, then closes it, blushing from his nose all the way to the tips of his ears. Bucky wants to smack himself.

"Okay," Steve says, after he recovers. "Okay, so what if we hid in a memory that wasn’t emotionally significant? Just… Something boring, something they wouldn’t think to look for."

Bucky shakes his head. “They’ll come back for us. They want to take my identity, Steve, I don’t—I don’t know how to hide from that.”

"We have to try, though," Steve insists. "Come on, think!"

 _Somewhere boring, somewhere boring_ , Bucky repeats in his head like a mantra, closing his eyes. _Somewhere boring, somewhere_ —

"James Barnes!" a sharp voice calls out, jerking him to attention. He opens his eyes and Coney Island is gone, in its place a drab classroom full of bored kids; the stale warm air makes his eyelids droop.

"Yes ma’am," he says automatically.

"This is the third time you’ve fallen asleep in my class this week," the teacher ( _Mrs. Faust_ , he remembers now, _eighth grade, the year before I quit going_ ) scolds. “Are you unable to fall asleep in your own bed, or do you just find wooden chairs particularly comfortable?”

"Sorry, ma’am," Bucky mutters, ducking his head. Blessedly, Mrs. Faust just sighs and turns back to the blackboard. Bucky takes the opportunity to look around the room for Steve, and breathes a sigh of relief when he sees Steve standing against the wall at the back of the room, arms crossed over his chest, an amused smile spreading over his face.

"Think it worked?" Bucky asks in a whisper.

Steve shrugs and looks around at the room. “Nothing’s disappearing yet.”

—

_Halt the procedure. Something’s wrong._

_But sir—_

_I said, halt! The readouts have flatlined, he’s stopped responding._

_How is that possible?_

_He may have developed some kind of resistance to the procedure. Lower the voltage a few notches._

_Lower, sir?_

_A different voltage may re-engage with the memories without risk. Upping the voltage could damage other functions._

_Lowered voltage three notches. Proceed?_

_Proceed._

—

Bucky jerks his head to one side as the shock travels through him, leaving him breathless and shaking. When he opens his eyes, he is still sitting in Mrs. Faust’s classroom, but Steve is gone and the room has decayed, paint peeling off the walls, the blackboard covered with a film of dust. Mrs. Faust’s voice sounds like it’s being transmitted over a half-broken radio, syllables getting cut off the ends of words, everything blurring together in static.

"No," Bucky moans, "No, no, please—"

—

_Subject is responding accordingly with lower voltage, as predicted. Continue procedure as planned._

—

He opens his eyes to rain pouring down in sheets, turning everything black and white and gray. He is walking behind Steve as they climb the steps to Steve’s apartment, worried for some reason he can’t name, and Steve will not look at him.

"Come on, I’ll just keep buggin’ you about it if you don’t tell me," he goads Steve when they reach the small rickety porch in front of Steve’s door. Steve hangs his head, and it sends a chill of dread down Bucky’s spine.

"My mama," he says, finally, barely audible over the rain. "She’s dying."

Bucky freezes.

"Tuberculosis," Steve continues. He scrubs at his nose with a sleeve. "She musta caught it at work. Nothing they can do."

"Oh, Steve…"

Steve bristles, just like Bucky remembers, and wrenches his door open with more than appropriate force. “There, now you know. Gonna leave me alone or am I gonna have to shut the door in you face?”

"Steve, wait—"

Steve shuts the door in his face.

Bucky remembers this part so clearly it’s painful; he remembers sitting down against the door, legs splayed out in front of him; he remembers the rain dripping through the cracks in the porch above him; he remembers waiting and singing to himself and picking at the sodden wood slats until Steve opened the door again, fast enough that Bucky almost toppled over into Steve’s apartment—he remembers that amused quirk of Steve’s mouth and the feeling of absolute helpless rage as he watched Steve putter around the tiny apartment, listlessly picking things up and putting them back without really seeing them and he remembers tears from both of them, later, after the alcohol took hold, Steve grieving for his mama and Bucky upset that he couldn’t do anything but hold his friend tight to his chest—

It doesn’t happen like that this time.

"Steve!" Bucky pounds on the door as the buildings down the street start to dissolve and fall apart. "Steve, open up, come on you idiot we have to go—”

Steve yanks the door open, drenched and annoyed, and Bucky grabs his hand again and they run, again, down rickety steps that disappear almost instantly after their feet move on to the next one, through sheets and sheets of a relentless downpour.

"We have to hide deeper," Steve shouts over the white noise of the rain. "Stuff you’ve buried, stuff you wouldn’t remember if you were awake!" Bucky looks back at Steve, rain dripping into his eyes. "Hide us under humiliation!"

 _Humiliation_. Bucky squeezes Steve’s fingers and closes his eyes. “This ain’t gonna be pretty,” he mutters.

Steve squeezes back. “You always were an ugly bastard,” Steve teases, and Bucky laughs and goes to shove Steve’s shoulder, but then he’s falling forward, slamming his hands into wooden floors. His clothes are dry now, but his shoulder stings hot and bright and heavy from some blow brought down on it, and it drowns out the lesser pain in his scraped-up hands.

Another blow knocks him down again, his vision going black and blue for a moment, and Bucky almost laughs when he remembers where this is.

"My first real beating," he tells Steve, who is standing nearby, looking deathly pale. "I broke a plate, one of Ma’s" — _thwack_ — “good ones. Pa called it” — _thwack_ — “a ‘rite of passage’ or some bullshit.” Another heavy thwack with the belt across his shoulder blades, right at the bone, makes him hiss as he tries to remember how to breathe through this. He is on all fours, head bowed, sweat and (he’s pretty sure) a bit of blood beading along hot lines of pain on his bare back.

—

_Halt procedure._

_What now?_

_The readouts have flatlined again._

_I expected better of you, Doctor._

_This is nothing I can control. The subject’s resistance to the pro—_

_I don’t care. Get the subject back in line or there will be consequences._

—

"No, stop—" Steve can’t help himself from reaching for the belt, murder in his eyes, but Bucky lifts a hand and stops him in his tracks.

"You wanted to hide in humiliation," Bucky hisses through his teeth. One final whack of the belt against the edge of his ribs, this time with the metal buckle, and he goes down, whimpering, unwanted tears springing to his eyes. He waits until he hears his father leave the room before he lets them fall. He presses his face into the floor and does not lift his head when Steve walks over, sits next to him, strokes his hair.

"I didn’t know it was like this," Steve says quietly, his voice tinged with guilt but no pity, which Bucky is grateful for.

"I made sure of it," Bucky says into the floorboards. "He dies next year anyway."

"Good," Steve spits, and Bucky huffs a laugh before pushing himself up and swiping at his eyes.

—

_Sir, I believe I can restart the procedure._

_You best pray it works._

_There’s no reason it shouldn’t. One big jolt before we turn down the voltage to the normal range will re-engage with the memory mechanisms._

_Do not lose this subject, Doctor. He’s the best candidate we’ve had yet, by far. We have a lot invested in him. Is that understood?_

_Understood, sir. Ready to continue procedure._

_Fire away, then._

—

He hears the shock coming this time, a split second before he feels it, and reaches blindly out for Steve as it hits. Steve is, thankfully, still there, warm and grasping Bucky’s hand tightly in return, but the rest of the room starts to shake and dissolve. They beat it out of there, Bucky’s back still stinging as the skin stretches.

"Maybe that one wasn’t buried deep enough," Steve shouts over the noise as they run.

"Then I don’t know what would be," Bucky shouts back, although he does. He does know but he would do almost anything to keep Steve from seeing it.

"Bucky," Steve says, quietly, tugging on their linked hands to make Bucky stop running and look at him. When he does, he knows Steve knows. "Humiliation wasn’t deep enough. What about shame?"

Bucky’s shoulders sag. “You tryin’ to kill me, punk?” he says weakly, and the joke falls so flat that Steve doesn’t even crack the ghost of a smile. Bucky hates this more than anything, his secrets being pried open in front of Steve; the fact that he’s in his own head and Steve is just a memory does nothing to assuage that. He’d had few secrets from Steve when they were growing up, and Steve hadn’t held many things from him either, but the ones he’d kept, he’d done out of what he felt was necessity, because it would kill him for Steve to know them.

He closes his eyes, holding Steve’s hand much tighter than strictly necessary, and when he opens them, he’s on his knees in an alley, somewhere deep in Brooklyn’s bad side, just a sliver of a moon hovering dimly in the night sky above him. A man, his face a shadow in the dark, is unbuttoning his pants in front of Bucky’s face, holding several dollar bills tantalizingly in his meaty fist.

"Oh, my God," Steve whispers.

It’s over quick enough, and the man thrusts the money into Bucky’s shaking outstretched hand before buttoning himself up and sauntering out into the street, casual as you like. Wiping his mouth, Bucky lowers himself down to lean against the brick wall, counts his money, and pockets it. Steve slides down the wall across from him, and the alley is small enough for Steve to reach out and touch, but he doesn’t.

"Why?" Steve’s voice is ragged along the edges.

He is right to ask; they’d been better off during the later years of the Depression than they had any right to be, two orphans with no attachments except to each other and only one of them with an actual diploma. Bucky worked long hours at the docks and it wasn’t great money, but it paid the bills, mostly, and Mr. Bloch, the kind grocery store owner a few streets away from their shared apartment, gave Steve enough hours as a store clerk and stockboy to make up for the rest. Money was tight, very tight, but they made do well enough; that is, until Steve had gotten deathly sick just a month after turning nineteen. Sick enough to need a hospital stay, which neither of them had been able to pay for, until Bucky had mysteriously come up with the money. He’d handwaved it when Steve had asked, going on about the generosity of neighbors and extra shifts at the docks. Steve, uncharacteristically, had let the matter drop.

"You were sick," he rasps, choosing that moment to look Steve directly in the eye. He wants Steve to know, even if this is just a memory of Steve, that he does not blame Steve for this. The enormity of what was done for him hits Steve with an almost physical force, and Bucky watches him crumble under the weight of it. "Hey," he says as lightly as he can, kicking Steve’s foot. "Don’t cry. You’re damn ugly when you cry." Steve laughs and swipes at his cheeks.

"What happens if they find us here?" Steve asks when he has composed himself.

Bucky shakes his head helplessly. The thought of losing Steve frightens him in a way that he has never felt before, not when he was strapped to Zola’s table, not when he woke up with a metal arm and strangled someone with it on pure instinct. He takes a deep breath and admits his fear out loud: “I don’t know if I can save you.”

Steve crosses the tiny alley in one smooth move and crushes Bucky in a tight, tight embrace; Bucky buries his face in Steve’s shoulder and just holds on.

"It’s okay," Steve whispers into his neck. "It’s okay."

Bucky feels but doesn’t look up to watch the memory crumbling around them.

The memories move faster then, like they did at the start, whizzing past his consciousness like he’s watching scenery go by from inside a train: teaching Steve how to dance, stepping on Steve’s toes intentionally to annoy him; his mother’s funeral as the snow fell and turned to slush under his boots; his first night on the docks learning the ropes.

The last one is of him and Steve one muggy summer evening, sitting on the fire escape outside their apartment. Steve is drawing the city at its twilight, the cheap pencil and even cheaper paper smudging under his fingers. Bucky dangles his legs from the edge, resting his head on the metal railing, and watches Steve’s hands. He doesn’t know how he knows this is the last memory, or why they left this one for the end, but he’s beyond trying to understand and just swings his legs through the air instead of getting up to run.

"This is it, Buck." Steve echoes Bucky’s thoughts without looking up from his drawing. "This is all gonna be gone soon."

"I know." Bucky’s voice barely reaches above a whisper. "I know."

"What do we do?"

He meets Bucky’s gaze then, and Bucky knows they won’t be running anymore.

He shrugs and gestures down at Steve’s sketchpad. “Keep drawing.”

Steve draws until the buildings around them begin to blur like a photo left out in the rain. Bucky watches him stow away his drawing pad and pencil in a threadbare bag. He turns toward Bucky and they hug one last time.

"I’ll find you," Steve whispers in Bucky’s ear. "I’ll find you, I promise."

Bucky keeps his eyes closed and holds onto Steve as long as he can before the blackness overtakes him.

—

_Procedure complete at 0500 hours. Subject still unconscious. We are confident enough in the procedure to posit that it has been completely successful._

_Thank you, Doctor. Prepare subject for testing._

—

Nearly seventy years later and a thousand miles away, Steve keeps his promise.

**Author's Note:**

> I have taken a few lines directly from the film and I take no credit for those. The title comes from the second stanza of the poem "Eloisa to Abelard" by Alexander Pope.


End file.
